Poetry Problem #4

Poetry problem #4: "Create three “poetry problems” that are more interesting and challenging than the best of the problems I’ve given you so far".

When I was thinking of these poetry problems I tried to focus on what I would enjoy doing for a poetry assignment. I tried to make these so someone doing them would have a lot of fun and also be really engaged with a poem.

1. Find a poem (or if you can’t find one you like, write one) that you feel suits your favorite fictional character. Post it to your blog and provide an explanation as to why you chose it.

2. This is an assignment that involves the whole group: Together the group will write a poem. Each person will write eight lines. The first person will write the first eight lines and then show only the last three lines of their section for the next person to look over and expand upon for their eight line section. This cycle will continue until everyone has written their section and then the sections are put together to reveal the final poem.

3. Choose one of the authors we have talked about this semester and one of their poems. Then re-write their bio and poem in another style. It could be in the style of another author (e.g. Milton’s Paradise Lost invocation in the style of Dr. Seuss) or any other style (e.g.the style of a script of an episode of the Real Housewives). Anything goes with this poetry problem.

--Ally

Overachiever (Visual Explication)

After a rather timely recitation from Maia and Tiye, I changed my visual explication to the poem "Overachievers." You can watch an excellent recitation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq8ErEFLm18

I wanted to somehow convey the emotions that the poem made me feel visually. For some reason the mess of a collage just felt right. I used words that I felt embodied the "perfection" that high school students are expected to achieve.

Without further ado, here's my visual representation of the poem "Overachievers."

Money and Poetry

Prompt: Robert Graves said “If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.” Prove this. Or prove it false.

When I first looked at this statement, I struggled with defining either half of the quote, thus making it difficult to prove either way. I decided on two main interpretations of the first statement "If there's no money in poetry" and proved both to be true.


One possible interpretation of the first statement is that poets are unable to earn enough money for a living by writing poetry.

Proof using interpretation one: Assume that there is no money in poetry, or that poets are unable to earn enough money for a living by writing poetry. This means that in order for the poets to earn money, they have to do something that is not poetry. This means that they earned money without using poetry, so it can be concluded that there is no poetry in the way that they earned money, and thus there is no poetry in money.


Another possible interpretation of the first statement is that poetry itself has no money inside of it, meaning that poetry itself has no worth, and as such cannot be used as a currency.

Proof using interpretation two: Assume that there is no money in poetry, or that poetry itself has no worth and cannot be used as a currency. This means that something else must be used for currency (coins, bills, precious metals, etc), and this other currency does not include any poetry. Therefore, the money, or currency, does not have any poetry in it, proving the statement once again.

Random poetry/money sidenote: This is a short poem about money that I remember reading in elementary school to learn about coins. The quote reminded me of this poem, so I thought I would post it here

Poetry Probs No. 4

I being more science minded find that often, science and math people, like myself, can get into a mindset that everything needs to follow from some rule of science and math. We don’t always allow ourselves just to sit back and observe what is happening around us, we want to try to be hands on and make something happen. Reading poetry can help you relax, but also make you think about what you are reading. A lot of poets draw inspiration by simply sitting back and observing what is happening in the world around them. They can then beautifully reflect their observations into their poems. Scientists, and everyone really, need to have an understanding of the little things that make the world beautiful. The little things such as an encounter between a farmer and a mouse, a view looking out across the English channel, or a piece of Grecian pottery. This poem I think helps reflect why scientists should read poems (they might gain a friend).

“The Poem”

Let’s put it under a microscope one said

and see what we can see.

Then we can dissect its inner meaning

whatever that may be.

Hold on for a moment I said,

as they began to start,

rather than pick its brain

let’s get to know its heart.

We sat down to talk face to face

it taught us beauty, it taught us grace,

each word it presented carefully in place.

And when our conversation drew nigh,

so as to never have to say goodbye,

I folded it and in my pocket put it

and every so often I take it out to talk a bit.

One similarity that I would like to note between science and poetry is the emphasis on everything being in its proper place. Like an experiment where every step needs to be performed meticulously to get the desired result, every word in a good poem seems to fit perfectly in its place.  

I will leave you with a “scientific” poem I wrote in around first grade.

Jupiter has a red spot

Venus is very hot

The sun is hot

Pluto is not

Poetry Problem No. Three

An Artistic Work of Writing that Usually is Rhythmic and has Stanzas

As a child, I was curious about our world

I was curious about dinosaurs and royalty and how to apply blush without turning into a clown (an important skill which is still unknown)

Why do kings don crowns?

Why do snow rabbits and caribou think a tundra is a good crash pad, whilst woodlands swarm with ladybugs and frogs?

My longing for wisdom was not bound by things I could touch, nor things that could actually occur

I thought about archaic myths and dark night sky

Hydras that spit liquid rock

UFO’s

If I would allow, my imagination had no limits

Floating for hours among cosmic junk I would swim though a burning galaxy and run around Saturn’s rings. I would find a shooting star and fly straight on ‘till morning to a land I’d only known from books and films, with lost boys and villains with hooks for hands.

And mountains

Lots and lots of mountains

Obviously, living in Illinois, land of Lincoln and flat ground, climbing a mountain was a fantasy.

I’d switch out corn and soy for a mountain any day.

In my mind I could climb a mountain, no, triumph against a mountain as if it was nothing. I probably thought that if I stood atop a mountain I could watch stars spring into sight and light dim into ground and tiny cars winding around roads far away.

I probably thought I would find a goblin and a pot of gold on a mountain’s top

But I didn’t. I found books about topography. And Italian royal court, and astronomy, and frogs

And that was just as good.

 An Explanation:

I found that writing a poem without the letter “e” to be a real challenge. I had to pick each word carefully and make it really count in order to make the poem convey what I wanted it to. When I edited my poem, a lot of the time I found I had put in a really elaborate word when I didn’t need to. I edited it a lot, but even now it can come off (in my opinion) kind of weird and/or too flowery and elaborate. I quickly realized that talking about what will happen now can be more complicated, and can demand the letter “e” more, than talking about time gone by. In addition to leaving out “e” I would periodically leave out another letter, like “u” or an “a” when I could have totally left it in. I did write the word “the” a lot out of habit, and then have to go back and edit my poem. I found that a writing a good poem without the letter “e” took much more time than I had thought it would. I knew that the letter “e” and the other banned letter are critical, but I hadn’t realized quite how widely utilized they are. Writing the poem can be likened to putting together a puzzle, and it reminded me a lot of a cryptogram (http://www.cryptograms.org) . In a cryptogram, you have to figure out every letter in a word, only from knowing how often each letter will occur and it can really highlight how often a letter can appear in a word or chunk of text.

** The following text has no letter restrictions **

I also made an art project to go with my poem. I liked the idea of it opening like a book and the inside of the “book” having pictures of a few of the things I talk about in the poem.

~ Ally

Poetry and Programming

Most people do not associate poetry with computer programming. Yet on a fundamental level, poetry and programming actually have many similarities...

1. Brevity. The best poems and computer codes are concise and use the fewest words or symbols. The best poems are those that have many interpretations contained within a short arrangement of words. Similarly, the best programs are the efficient ones that can complete a task with the fewest lines possible.

2. Word choice. Every symbol and word has a purpose in both poems and computer code. Every word in a poem has a meaning, and the author chose every single word for an important reason. In the same way, every symbol in a computer program has a reason for being there. No programmer leaves extra words or characters cluttering up the code.

3. Hard to understand by skimming. The meaning of both a poem and a computer code is not clear after just a quick glance. You cannot understand the full meaning and all the nuances of a poem by just skimming it in a few minutes. You have to sit down, analyze it, and think about each line's purpose. The same is true of a computer code. If one programmer tries reading someone else’s uncommented code, they would find it almost impossible to make sense of without careful reading and analysis.

4. Repetition. In many poems, repetition is key. Whether it is repeating the same first line in a verse, repeating a word or phrase two or three times for emphasis, or just repeating the same theme throughout the poem. In computer programming, the fundamental basis of almost every code is loops, which allow programmers to repeat a section of the code as many times as the programmer wants. Both poems and code would lose meaning without constant repetition.

Below are some simple programs that can be read in haiku form. The first represents the basic syntax of a for loop in Java. The second is a basic program in c++ that outputs the text “Hello world.” The third is a similar basic text-output program in Java.

for( int x = 10; x > 2; x--)

For int x is 10

x strictly greater than 2

x decrease by 1

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#include <iostream>

int main()

{

      cout << "Hello World!";

}

Include iostream

Int main no parameters

C-out hello world

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

public class program

{
public static void main(String[] args)
{

System.out.print(“Hi!”)

    }

}

Public class program

public static void main args

System out print Hi!

Should a poem fit in a box? (Problem 1)

Alright, well first, did you really try? Did you fold it neatly? Did you try to crumple it up first? Did you really shove it in? Yes? Okay. Did you try to find a bigger box? Did you pull apart the poem, line by line, to see if it fit then? Did you really, really try? Yes? Hmm. Okay.

This might be one of those poems. The ones that boxes just can’t contain. Sometimes poems are like people. They don’t fit into tiny cardboard boxes like we want them to. They spill over the sides, into other boxes, or maybe into none at all. And that’s okay.

Sometimes when a poem doesn’t fit in a box, it’s scary. Like when a person doesn’t fit into just one box. We want poems, like people, to fit into one box and one box only. Prose, rhyme, haiku, sonnet, modern. But what if as the author was painting their poetry to life they dipped their paintbrush into more than one color of poem. A bit of blue, haiku, a bit of purple, modern, and then an accent of yellow, rhyme. They all come together to make one poem. A poem that, yes, doesn’t fit into a box.

Boxes are overrated. Imagine if the boxes we checked defined us; female, male, straight, gay, black, white, child, adult. We are more than the boxes we are put in. Poems are too.